Where to begin? The much-trumpeted deal in Brussels to save the euro is no more than a temporary fix, you will have read everywhere, only putting off the inevitable – the collapse of the single currency and, with it, the crazed, anti-democratic and delusional economics of europhiles. The ¤1 trillion bailout fund is ephemeral; the proposed recapitalisation of Europe's banks is too little; Greece's debts are still unsupportable, even though the country is relieved of half of them. So the received wisdom goes.

Then, warming to their task, the British army of eurosceptics and nitpicking economists pronounce that the real test will be Italy rather than Greece. The German taxpayer will not, and cannot, bail out Italy. The euro's end has only been deferred, not avoided. After all, the single currency is an absurd straitjacket that has forced disparate economies into an impossible monetary union. Next, throwing a few German words into the pot – Zukunftmusik and Uberwachung are two favourites – to dramatise its foreignness along with an obligatory reference to the Holy Roman Empire or the 1,000-year Reich, the EU is written off as corrupt, reckless and rigid. Stukas at five o'clock! Jerry is coming! Democracy and statehood denied!

Nobody can know whether this Brussels deal is good enough finally to settle the crisis; my hunch is that Greece may eventually have to be forgiven 80% of its debts, the bailout fund may have to be equipped more transparently with the euros it needs and a genuine reforming Italian administration elected to replace Berlusconi before the issue is beyond doubt.

So we can expect more alarms and panics. But the lesson from last Wednesday is clear: the Europeans will do what they need to make the euro work – and the financial markets are in the end not stronger than determined states acting in concert. A framework is emerging, which will underwrite the euro and, crucially, allow the European Central Bank to buy euro-denominated assets in trillions if need be. The likelihood is thus that the euro will pull through, which is certainly what the markets think, up some 15% from their lows just weeks ago.

In which case, last Wednesday was a watershed moment – when the euro's future looked more certain and the Europeans began to reshape their continent, in particular the financial and political architecture in which their economies will function. They are leaving the 19th-century nation state behind and creating something new. It is a political construct that operates as a self-help club so that each member is stronger and has more freedom of action than it would outside, but for which membership is going to require tough and well-policed terms. Traditional thinking believes that only states can underwrite currencies. But the Europeans are engaging in something more bold and innovative – the creation of a currency by a tight political club.

This could fail, but it's not been done as an act of wilful frivolity, a desire to undermine democracy or a result of supreme economic ignorance – the terms in which it is greeted in Britain across the political spectrum. It is a response to two fundamental needs: to manage growing interdependence and to build a counterweight to turbo-finance – and so sustain trade and democracy alike. Britain feels it has no need to do either.

The critics of the single currency cheerfully ignore that both the currency regimes that preceded it failed. Floating exchange rates nearly wrecked the single market, while the system of semi-fixed exchange rates – the ERM – collapsed because what it meant in practice was every member state having to shadow German economic policy. And just imagine how immeasurably harder it would now be to contain the impact of the financial meltdown in a world of floating exchange rates: there would have been a domino effect of failing banks across Europe as in the early 1930s.

Critics always point to the safety valve of devaluation that the euro denies. But in today's world, where supply chains are global and so many goods and services are bought because of their quality and knowledge content rather than their price, devaluation is much less effective – as Britain is discovering. Nor is it costless, as we are also discovering: it implies squeezed living standards while there is reform and structural adjustment which cannot be avoided. Greece, outside the euro, could have unilaterally defaulted on its debts, sparked a European bank collapse, devalued and shrunk living standards – all to preserve retirement at 53 and the middle class paying no taxes. Would that have been so magnificent?

Keynes advocated a single global currency, bancor, policed by what became the IMF, for many of these reasons. The euro, policed by a well-resourced European Monetary Fund with the power to enforce tough budgetary disciplines, closely follows his ideas. His visionary prospectus was for nations to come together to underpin global prosperity and thus freedom – and for which a single currency was an indispensable pillar. Europe's liberal democracies are trying for this.

Argument, I have come to think, is not going to change England's hostility: it is too deep-seated and patrolled by an overwhelming and unthinking centre-right media. Change will come from Britain living through failure. In the years ahead, successive chancellors and governors of the Bank of England will have no independence; we will have to shadow the eurozone or be punished by the markets. Inflation will be volatile; unemployment high; growth low – and living standards continually squeezed. Growth in Europe will pick up surprisingly quickly once the crisis recedes. There can be few such hopes in Britain and the eurozone will start to look much more attractive.

As Russian companies Polymetal, Polyus Gold and Evraz race to join Eurasian Natural Resources as FTSE100 companies, despite their murky practices, because of London's incredibly lax listing requirements, one future scenario is becoming clearer. England will dissociate from the EU and try to build an economy as an offshore financial and tax-avoidance centre. Scotland, horrified by the options offered by England, will vote for independence and join the eurozone, leaving England as the country of Little Englanders.

But there is another future – holding Britain together as a federation, building a high innovation economy and aiming eventually to be in the same political club, with its currency, as the best in Europe. I know my preferred option and I suspect, if ever spelled out in these terms, it would be shared by most of Britons. But the chances of that are negligible. To get there, we may have first to drink deeply from the eurosceptic cup of failure.